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August 2011

August 30, 2011

She obediently scoots toward the edge of the driveway, closer to me and the dogs, farther from the vehicle as she tries once again to whip the hoop around, hoping that simply moving her arms will provide the circular momentum needed to keep it orbiting around her waist.

It falls.

Sprite looks back at me and smiles, her eyes alighting when she sees the other larger hoop whizzing in the air, propelled by my small arm movements.

"How do you do THAT?" she asks, awed by the quick revolutions.

The best thing about the summer has been now. Finally, after fighting our way through traffic, the construction, destruction, and inevitable clean up of dinner, we are now able to step outside for more than a few minutes to enjoy the warm air without still feeling the lingering heat of the day, the pink tinted sky, the calm of the neighborhood.

In a few days, it will be too humid again to truly appreciate, too hot to consider going back out there after just escaping into the air conditioned house, but right now it's perfect.

"Let's play school!"

My favorite part.

We lay our hoops down close to each other and sit within the rounds on the drive, shadowed by my huge minivan beast, and the sounds of Harry trying to bite into a large soccer ball, larger than he is, at least, from where it's wedged near my front tire.

"I'm the teacher and you're....also a teacher," Sprite instructs, happy with herself that she's able to give me a title, since thanks to preschool logic, adults are not allowed to pretend to be children. They're too big and therefore forbidden, just like boys are not allowed to be princesses and girls are not allowed to be superheroes.

Somewhere, in a few years, these roles will be reversed and reversed once more, but for now, the four year old's encyclopedia is written.

"Okay," I respond, just happy to be a part of her imagination, something that has been happening less and less while we were housebound in the evenings, Sprite preferring to play with her dolls and their size appropriate castles. "Where's the class?"

"The bunnies are the kids."

I smile, not sure if the bunnies are "present" yet. It's just us, two hoops, a nuerotic beagle tethered to her leash, and a hyper terrier who is now debating which round object is more enticing, the soccer ball, or my tire.

She hops up, steps around me and my protective hoop, and into the grass where she leans down and scoops up the air. Holding the loose atoms in her embrace, she returns to her circle of power once more, sitting down and depositing nothing in front of us.

"Ten bunnies. I'll count them." Her mouth moves silently as I can almost hear her count out to the magic ten. "Ten. All here!"

I don't see the bunnies. I play along anyway.

"What's first, Ms. Sprite?"

"No, Ms. Lisa. Say it with me, Miss. Lee. Sa."

The teacher is bossy. "Ms. Lisa."

"Good job! You get a sticker." She turns to address the rest of the students, now taking the form of one of her own classroom teachers, "Class, we're going to say the Pledge of Allegiance."

She bounces up again, places her left hand to the right side side of her chest and with her right hand, she holds the invisible flag. Years of adult non-commitance fade away, my own right hand sneaks up and takes place, my back straightens, almost feeling the rigid cold chair backs of my old elementary classroom, listening as she gently butchers the tradition and segues immediately into a rendition of "Grand Old Flag", complete with low pitched murmurs over the phrases she never quite understood when learning it and a patriotic march step before signaling the end with a salute and a hearty "Yessir!"

"Wonderful!" I crow, shrugging off my auto correct feature for now. We don't correct when we're playing, how else do we lose ourselves when reality has to be brought up?

John's car pulls up along the grass, he obviously sees us as we're occupying his usual parking space.

Sprite looks up from admonishing a bunny who was not marching along (unfortunately, I must have been ignorant of this as well) and her face lights up. "Daddy!" She looks back down at the pavement in front of us. "Nap time! Go take a nap! Mommy, rub the bunnies' backs," she orders, before running off to greet her father.

John walks up with her and immediately takes a seat within the third hoop, squishing the sleeping bunnies. "What are you guys playing?"

"We're playing school. I'm Ms. Lisa, Mommy is..... Ms. Mommy. You be, um, be Mr. Daddy." She either doesn't notice or fails to remember that her father is sitting where she had placed her students. No matter, she turns to his right and addresses the "moved" rabbits.

"Okay, we now are going to work in our circles, everyone partner up," she orders, clapping her hands twice in Mary Poppins style practicality. "Ms. Mommy, you watch the class."

She immediately plops into John's lap for a cuddle, leaving me to control the possibly (?) out of control bunnies. And If I blur my eyes the tiniest bit, dull out the harsh edges of reality, I can just see them now.

August 26, 2011

You only have to spend a few minutes on this site and read through some posts to know that I am all about word play. I love to place similar sounding words together in order to tease the brain's tongue, because sometimes, it just flows. And yes, I like to rhyme. To an extent.

You also would know, from my Facebook content, that I tend to sneer at abbreviations. (We all know I hate to LOL...) I would rather write it out, think it through carefully, before I hit Publish.

So it would be safe to assume (Regardless of the way I butcher sentence structure, since, let's face it, I write my posts much in the way I'd talk to a friend, so my 7th grade English teacher, Ms. Dodd, can just put away her red pen.) that I speak the same way. I do. I'm wordy, to a fault, (Baba, Becca, Rachel, and Cynthia may need to back me up on this one) in the way I tell any story, and this has been inherited by my daughter.

Sprite is a gifted storyteller already. When she begins to tell me about her day, I have to just listen and I can follow along to almost everything she describes, because, yes, my dear friends, the child is all about the back story. By the end of it, you almost believe whatever she's telling you really happened even if kids can't really fly or scale the playground equipment like Spiderman.

"Today, in the playground? I saw my bird, CeCe. And she was five years old. And she was an egg. And, Mommy, how old is your bird Sandy?"

I have a bird? "Um, Sandy is eleven."

"Really? Like my cousin Bryan?"

"Yep."

"Do they know each other?"

"...I don't think so."

"Well, CeCe is only five. And she's a grown up now."

"But I thought she was an egg."

"No, Mommy, Weren't you listening? I said she WAS an egg. That's called past tense."

Damn, this preschool is good.

This morning as we were letting the dogs in before leaving for school:

"What's that noise?"

"Hm? Oh, it's a bird out in our tree. Probably telling the other birds it's morning."

"Oh, Mommy! It's your bird! It's Sandy!"

"....You're right!.... Hey, Sandy! Knock it off!"

Would you believe the bird listened?

Now, you're probably wondering where the plea comes in. Sprite, while being so wonderfully vocal with her expressions and stories and big words for such a young age, is having a bit of a hard time with reading. And I am content to let her learn along with the rest of the class, (even if the sight words are making me a tad touchy, how on earth do I explain the word "could" and its silent ninja l?) but she is chomping at the bit to read herself. We've been working on the sight words, spelling out words we see, and then trying to sound them out, but beyond that, it's like there's an obstacle which makes her completely ignore the "stop" she sees in a book, even though she can spell it out loud, point it out on the signs and the painted asphalt.

Does anyone have any secrets to teaching reading to children? Should I just keep doing the reading one book a night thing with her and let nature (and her teachers) lead the parade? By the way, the Tag books have not been worth it to us. While Sprite likes to play with the games and listen to the voices, the words don't get spelled out phonetically, they just get said whenever the pen touches the section.

I'm not trying to push her forward, but I can see that this is something she wants to do and I'm unfortunately not communicating it in a way she understands. Which is strange for two people who like to carry out whole conversations just using the word "hmm" and varying pitches of the voice to express emotion. (Yeah, people in the grocery stores don't get it either.)

School's back! (In our case, it's been back for 3 weeks.) The kiddies are trudging into class, mothers everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief at having their homes quiet for at least a few hours at a time, and homework is now a daily occurrence. (Even my VPK student had two homework assignments on the same night this week!)

We're already thinking back to the last two months and the carefree days of summer, even if it still feels like summer in some parts of the country.

So tell us! What did you do on your summer vacation? Did you camp out? Stay in? Fly away? Get away? Get back?

Spin it up and submit it! Remember! Homework is due by next Friday for full credit. Single space, typed out, watch your paragraphs. Yes, I'm looking at you, Missy.

August 23, 2011

I was out on Saturday for a girl's night out, leaving John and Sprite to continue with their tradition of "Daddy/Daughter Date Night", even though Sprite is leery (understandably) of the phrase right now.

Since I was going to be out all night, and I was out ALL night, yeah, that would be best preserved (or pickled) for another post, I kept Sprite with me for the majority of the day since John had his own share of chores to take care of. So, I took her with me to the nail salon and let her experience her first manicure and pedicure since she was so interested in doing big girl things. (John heard about her wishes and immediately told me not to worry about the money, just do it, since he's concerned with her worries of all things dark and automotive these days, so he figured she needed a day of pampering to just have fun.) (Have I mentioned lately how much I love that man?)

The nail salon even had its own girl sized pedicure chair, complete with butterfly wings. Sprite felt honored to sit in it. I felt relieved when they only charged me fifteen bucks for both her hands and feet. But, oh, they took care of her. She had her first foot bath, ("Look, Mommy! The color's purple!") followed by her first sea salt scrub, and then the nail tech obliged her wish of "pink" and followed it up with little flowers on some of the nails and glitter.

While they were doing this, and the nail tech working on my feet was trying to start up his sandblaster for my own sorely neglected toes, I told her about her impending date with her father.

She wanted nothing to do with it. "I don't want to go to Date Night."

"Sweets, it's not going to happen like last time. Date Night doesn't mean you're going to have an accident. It was just that, an accident. Daddy will make sure nothing bad happens to you."

She looked down at her toes and smiled as the tech tickled the bottom of her feet with a loofah. "Remember when Daddy got in a accident and his chest was hurt? The doctor fixed him. And now he's better."

"Yes, he's-"

"And the blue car is fixed too."

"Yes, we have a new and better blue car."

She said nothing else, choosing instead to focus on the new experience of having her feet massaged. She didn't say much either as I got ready to leave for my own event, leaving John and Sprite to get ready for theirs.

I texted John later into the evening, asking how it all went. He told me to check Facebook as he had posted a play by play of their date:

"I'm out on a date with a special little lady. First, we start with some drinks.."

"She too was excited for tonight. Went out and even got her nails done. They look very nice.."

"...any good date holds his girl's hand..."

"Finish up the date with a nice movie, of course!"

I came home around 2 AM to find John in his office, waiting up for me, and Sprite, long asleep, with her sheets kicked off. Tucking her back in, she opened her eyes and gazed at me.

August 19, 2011

"Me too. It's not often I'm home before Sprite's asleep anymore these days."

"And you can help me write my Spin."

"Um, okay. What's it about?"

"Nature versus nurture."

"What the hell is that?"

"It's what we're inherently born with against how we're raised."

"Again, I ask, what the hell is that?"

"For instance, you look like your dad but...um... no, not a good example. Oh! I know, look at Sprite. She has a personality like me, but tends to be like you when it comes to technology."

"So?"

"That's nature versus nurture."

"So which is which?"

"Her...er...crap. My arguement is falling apart here."

"Can you give it to me in terms I can understand?"

"Okay... Pretend you're an Apple computer and you're raised in a family of Dell's."

"You mean PC's."

"Fine, PC's. Pretend you're an Apple in a family of PC's."

"I'd be an unhappy Apple."

"But you would-"

"You could say I'd be a rotten Apple."

"Haha. It's like an Apple computer being raised by PC's. The Apple would start to behave like a PC, right?"

"No, because computers can't take cues from their environment."

"Okay, then. I'm lost."

"I think I get what you're saying. It's like a guy who's raised in a family of females. He's born only knowing how to be male, but his mom and sisters being around him make him more understanding of females. He may turn out liking to bake if he watches it enough and is exposed to it."

So how do you Spin it? Did you ace your English class by throwing a bunch of big words at the teacher? Are you bilingual? Trilingual? (I don't think there's such a thing as quadrilingual.) (I stand corrected.)

What do you think about the language these days? Slang? The shorthand that kids think they've invented so brilliantly?

August 15, 2011

A comment came in from Jenn over at Flights of Fancy reminding me to buy another car seat for Sprite since it was in the van during the impact. And she's right. It should be common knowledge, but it's not, that any car seat in a vehicle that is involved in a crash, whether or not the car seat is occupied, whether or not the hit is in the vicinity of the car seat, needs to be replaced.

The funny thing about the car seat was that we had just installed a new booster seat for Sprite and she was in the process of moving from the five point harness to the seatbelt assisted booster when the accident occurred. Yes, both seats were in the vehicle at the time. (She's above the height/weight/age requirement for using the booster seat, so I reluctantly loosened my grip on the five point which I loved.) Therefore, I submitted a claim for BOTH seats.

The Geico representative actually called Graco right in front of me to see if the car seats should be replaced or not. (Here's how much I love the Graco customer service, I could hear the woman laughing through his cell phone as she told him in no uncertain terms, ANY CAR SEAT INVOLVED IN A LOSS SHOULD BE REPLACED.)

The accident happened on a Saturday. We replaced the car seats on Monday. We got our money back the following Friday.

*********************

You never realize how much life you live inside your car until it's involved in a wreck. (Or you are taking it to a carwash and need to empty it out before the detailer runs across your bank statement or the wadded Taco Bell wrappers you were too embarassed to throw out at home or at your job since people would see what kind of crap you really eat so you stuffed them under the seat to surrepticiously throw them out on your way into the grocery store, but conveniently forgot about them. Yeah, you know who you are.)

John and I traveled the forty miles to the tow yard (hooray for police and tow yard rotations when there was another tow yard within 3 miles of the scene and yet, because it was Saturday and it was this guy's turn, we got to take a bonus trip three cities down to release the van) and saw the "blue car" in the morning sunlight, taking stock of the damages we hadn't noticed before, the smashed windshield, the opened knee bolster airbag which had caused an enormous ugly bruise on John's left leg, just how far the damage traveled through the body of the vehicle, pushing the fender into the driver door, but stopping just before the entire engine compartment could get pushed into the cabin. Again, John and Sprite were very lucky. But that's another tangent. We were there to release the van to the at fault company, Geico, and gather our belongings. Things that I would normally throw away, old drawings that look like a hundred others that Sprite's done at school, a scratched Michael Buble CD, Sprite's princess dress that she wore to Chik-fil-a for Princess Night and promptly tore while monkeying around in the play area, a broken crown, her purse filled with little odds and ends that only a four year old understands, or maybe three year old, honestly, I couldn't remember just how long it had been there, things I would normally not really consider, I was suddenly saving since I thought she would want that little doll, the same doll she had been given at a family event and subsequently forgot about that very day, or drawings made so much more special since they had survived such a hit.

Suddenly, things that I normally would roll my eyes at, consider too dramatic, too poetic for the reality of it all, even the damn car, clawed at my heart strings. I guess what I'm trying to say here is items seem to take on a life of their own when you realize what you've lost.

You also realize how truely messy you actually are.

*************************

Sunday morning after the accident found us gathered in front of John's computer and looking at options for another vehicle. We had had a 2007 Dodge Grand Caravan, top of the line, bought new thanks to the APR and payment schedule. We used that van for everything, our frequent trips to Disney, journeys across state to see family, weekend jaunts around town just because it was roomy and we could avoid the "he/ she's touching me" game. Yes, even with one child, that game still exists.

Now, even though the van was great for, say, sudden urges to buy out IKEA and still find a way to get the oversized boxes home, the transmission was wonky, typical for Dodge at the time. Or the console lights burned out within a year, and no one could figure out how to break into them to change them, even the Dodge dealership we bought it from (which has since closed), the right window kept fritzing until they finally had to replace the regulator motor, and my absolute favorite, "there's a freon pool on the front passenger side floor". All pretty common issues with the brand. So, it wasn't a shock to hear John say "I hate the Dodge" sometimes.

He would watch the Honda Odysseys drive by with their sleek and controversial lightning bolt designs on the doors and vow to become a strictly Honda household again. (Our 2003 Accord still drives like a dream.)

Naturally, when Sunday came, he asked me what I wanted. My answer was "I want my car back." So, he showed me the bells and whistles behind the Odyssey since we both agreed we still needed the room not afforded by a sedan, and I'm against top heavy SUV's. A few days of visiting the dealership and even looking into "certified" Hondas later, we still couldn't find a price we were willing to pay or even could afford. (We were trying to match the payments to the Dodge since we knew that was in our strict budget.)

Toyota wasn't helping either with the ramped up price tag which honestly covered a lot of plastic interior. Tacky look for Toyota.

I began thinking of the saftey behind the "hated" Dodge and how I had seen the skid marks on the road, which showed that when John hit the other car and the Dodge turned sharply to where it came to a final rest facing Northbound in the Southbound lanes, the marks on the road proved that BOTH front wheels stayed on the ground. The airbags had deployed and saved John from a worse injury. The seatbelt did its job, even the annoying audible ding that the dash made when someone in the front wasn't buckled in which had John buckling his belt all the time when before that, he was an intermittent rule follower.

Taking stock of my concerns, he looked again into the Dodge brand and realized we would be able to basically get exactly what we had before, just newer, and make the same payments we had been making. He also looked into Edmunds and Consumer Reports, confirming that the issues we couldn't stand about the prior vehicle were fixed in the newer models.

John went to the new dealership and took a look, doing the research on the prices, using Costco and some buying guides online, then I came in and test drove it that evening. Within 2 hours of stepping foot in the dealership, we were able to get the price we wanted without haggling, and came out the owners of a 2011 Chrysler Town and Country. Basically, a glorified Dodge, without the rear DVD, but with enough interesting gadgets to make John happy.

Sprite's only concern in the entire thing was that it should be a blue car. Give or take a slight hue difference, it is in fact a blue van, so she's happy with it, content to use her iPod during trips and is actually learning to share the radio with me now.

***********************

Accidents take a toll on everyone, emotionally speaking.

While we've had a few weeks to get used to the "new blue car", I still bite my lip from cursing out the other driver for basically gauranteeing us five more years of car payments when we were about a year away from paying off the Dodge and being completely car payment free.

For a family that fights tooth and nail to get to "debt free", our deadline has been forced pushed back.

Yes, I understand that what we're paying in return is so small compared to what could have happened, but what really irks me is that twenty seconds would have stopped the entire chain of events from going down. Twenty seconds that the other driver took to let John pass by in the right lane before he had the clear road to cross, would have stopped John from being injured, would have stopped Sprite from hurting her shoulder, from seeing her daddy being taken away in an ambulance, from being afraid of being in the car in the dark, from being in the dark in her own safe home, something she had outgrown.

If the other driver had been patient, John and Sprite would have finished their date night, and Sprite wouldn't shudder at the word "date", like her eyes widened when I told her this last Saturday, while my parents were visiting, that Daddy and I were going out on a date. She immediately said, "don't get into an accident". Because this is how four year olds associate words and emotions.

If the other driver had been patient, we would be rolling along still in our sometimes "hated" Dodge, happily looking forward to the end of payments and our next oil change.

Thanks, driver of the Toyota. Yes, your baby may have been involved too, but your baby is too young to remember it, to cringe whenever we pass another accident scene, to ask why it happened or how, to question your complete lack of judgement that encouraged you to take that chance in the first place.

My baby will always remember it.

*********************

Okay, that's enough ranting, but I do feel better about things. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

Oh! And Susan and I did get to see Harry Potter the next day. We even used the tickets we weren't able to use the night before. When I explained the situation to the movie theater manager, he said, "Oh, THAT accident? I heard about that, that was your husband?"

Looks like John was famous for being part of the hold up that was making people late for Harry's opening weekend.

No wonder I still feel like going all Voldemort on the other guy's ass..

August 12, 2011

My bad habit is not unique. It's not extremely bad like Strange Addictions bad, and yes, I would call anything involving eating furniture or chalk or drinking laundry detergent a habit, albeit a dangerous one, don't try this at home, but it can break up marriages, invoke wars, and even prolong conversations when two like-minded people are involved.

I have to have the last word.

Hey, hey, I know you're probably thinking, Really, Jen? You couldn't develop some tangents to discuss your nail biting or worrying or even your tendency to not let go of the vacuum and rush to your child when she takes a header by tripping over the ottoman? (In my defense, the ottoman is huge. Like 3 feet by 3 feet huge. How could she MISS it?) (If she had landed ON the ottoman, I would have scored the dismount.)

No, seriously. My habit of ending any conversation on my own terms is truly affecting my life.

Case in point:

Earlier this month, or year, frankly, I'm still shocked we made it past the Rapture, I was in the ladies room, a shared bathroom between all of the offices on my floor, washing my hands at the sink. (Yes, I practice good hygiene.) My head was down as it usually is when I'm concentrating on my hygiene (and mentally singing "Row, row, row your boat" since it turns out your children CAN teach you something even though it rarely has any benefit to you other than to incite rotating choruses of the same song in time to the fax machine) and I wasn't making eye contact with anyone.

Another pet peeve of mine is anyone who tries to have a conversation with me in a public bathroom. Um, no. I just don't. Nor do I appreciate people who go to the bathroom and proceed to have a cell phone chat with others while tinkling. I have hung up on John in the past when I heard flushing in the background, sure I was flattered that he answered my call, but really, dude? I'm not that important that I can't wait for you to exit the loo. He did call me back to tell me he hadn't done anything yet, that was someone else flushing loudly, and then I was all, "What kind of weird ass restrooms do you have that have volume control on toilets and WHY HASN'T THIS BEEN MASS MARKETED?"

Anyways,

An older woman walked in behind me, I was still washing my hands, and opened a stall as if she was about to walk in. Then she backed out and said: "You better flush that commode again."

I ignored her because I didn't know she was speaking to me, no eye contact due to my privacy clause in the ladies thing, and continued to rub, rub, rub my soap.

"I SAID you'd better flush that commode again, young lady."

My eyes flew up into the mirror and caught hers staring at me in the reflection. She WAS talking to me. And she was pointing to a stall I hadn't even been in.

"Thanks for the warning," I remarked, finishing up my rinse and lowered my gaze back to my task at hand. (Get it?)

The entire rest of the day, I was nervous because I thought she had heard me curse her out and was now policing the bathroom in case I should need to use the facilities again, to call me out on my choice of word (no, no plural) and I therefore decided not to use that restroom and instead use the one on the second floor. Only, when I took the stairs to the second floor, (honestly, those who take the elevator for one floor unless physically unable to use the stairs should legally change their names to "Lazy", same as those who only take the stairs when going down, claiming it's great exercise.) I found out that my passcard does not work for the second floor's security clearance (hmm, what are they doing on THAT floor?) and then had to book it down to the first floor which ended up in that the only way out of the stairwell was to exit the building and then go around again to the main entrance since the entrance closest to me was for the college and I clearly do not look like a college kid. This resulted in me waiting to use the main restroom on the FIRST floor because classes had just let out and I was not given the memo on class times, but I do now know that Mrs. Frankle does not give fair midterms, I am so not taking her class next semester.

And yes, I may have been a little distressed that she probably now had my office number and was going to crank call me during my working hours.

Sorry, folks, the phsycology geek in me is coming out to play.. Also, Vandy may have accidentally inspired it with her bad habits Spin.

Have you noticed how you tend to sound like your mother when you answer the phone? Or you like mustard sandwiches like your dad? (I don't, but I remember when my father would come home when dinner wasn't yet on the table and he would slap some Golden's Spicy Brown on a piece of bread. I tried it once, didn't like it, but the memory still makes my taste buds salivate... Strange.)